Change Your Thoughts, Change Your DNA

Change Your Thoughts, Change Your DNA

The new genetics is all about how to alter gene activity in a positive direction. Deepak Chopra

For many years science told us that we were victims of our genetics: we had “good” genes and “bad” genes and illness, disease, cancer and even premature aging was a function of our DNA and largely outside of our control.

There is no such thing as a bad gene.

Deepak Chopra in his new book, Super Genes, theorizes that there is no such thing as a “bad gene”. All genes are good – that is, until we screw them up with poor lifestyle choices.

The latest research in the science of epigenetics and nutrigenomics (the science of how the environment and food affects our genetic activity) also indicates that our genes are fluid, dynamic and respond to everything – absolutely everything we experience like food, stress, sleep and movement.

Even the thoughts you think and the emotions you feel initiate a cascade of chemical activities in the body that either help you or harm you, create illness or well-being, keep your body youthful and vital or age you prematurely.

We each have the ability to activate an enormous amount of untapped potential.

We can go beyond wellness and prevention to achieve “radical well-being” says Chopra. And it has all to do with our attitude and lifestyle. When we make good lifestyle choices, we generate healthy genetic activity that keeps the body vital and youthful. Bad choices make us sick and prematurely age us.

So let’s start the journey of radical well-being together with one practice that will help you build brain power, develop resilience and revitalize body and mind. It doesn’t take much time, just focus and consistency.

Meditation is active training of the mind to increase awareness.

Take 10 minutes a day for meditation: Go to a quiet place, sit, breathe and let your mind be still. Whatever you wish to call it, quieting the mind will give you a much needed break from the intensity of life and our tech-crazy, electronic, multi-tasking world.

Yes, I know, your mind is already processing and making up stories about the kind of people who “meditate” (monks, mystics, Zen masters, odd balls) and you’re not one of them, but here’s what you need to know:

“Even a single day of mindfulness meditation practice can slow the activity of a gene that codes for inflammation, one of the greatest drivers of aging.”
(Time Magazine, February 12, 2015)

Meditation has been the focus of intense scientific research and what we have found is astonishing. Meditation actually changes the structure of the brain, increasing the “grey matter” – you know, the part that handles information processing and reflects your intelligence.

That’s a bonus in my book, but there are even more benefits this practice may deliver:

Make it easy and start with 5 or 10 minutes and gradually build up as you want. Put it into your schedule (if it’s not scheduled it won’t happen – trust me on this one), take a class or on-line course to get you started, and practice until it becomes a habit and part of your daily life.